Approval Chains
Approval Chains give the ability for a nominated chain of approvers to review, and subsequently approve or decline, an experience before it is sent to a user. The approval process moves in a linear fashion, i.e. the experience is approved by the first configured approver, then the second configured approver, and so on.
To access this module, log in to the Control Panel from the Simon homepage located at https://.exphub.com.au/manager. Navigate to the Global Site Configuration menu and click to expand. Finally, select “Approval Chains”.
Creating a new Approval Chain
To create a new Approval Chain, navigate to Global Site Configuration > Approval Chains > Add New Approval Chain and follow the below steps:
1. Name the approval chain in the "Approval Chain Name" field. This is the name you will see when allocating a chain to a user's experience (e.g. "Contact Centre Employees").
2. Type a description for the chain in the "Description" field (e.g. "Used for Contact Centre Employee approvals"). This can be your own internal description.
We now need to add administrators that should be a member of the chain you are configuring. To add administrators as approvers, click the “+ Add” button in the top right-hand corner of the table and expand the dropdown list. You will then be presented with the names of all administrators who have been configured for your organisation. If you require an additional administrator to be added, an Administrator with Authority within your organisation should e-mail help@thinksimon.com.au noting the administrator's full name, e-mail address and mobile number so that their login can be configured.
Select all the approvers that should be included in the chain. This list is multi-select – you do not need to add approvers one at a time. Once all approvers have been selected, click the “Add Approvers” button. To add more administrators, click the “+Add” button again and follow the above process.
Each Approval Chain must have at least one approver configured. There is no maximum limit to the number of approvers that can be members of an Approval Chain.
All selected approvers will now appear in the “Approval Chain Managers” table. The “Chain Order” column denotes the order that the approval chain will follow, i.e. the approver in Chain Order 1 will be the first approver, the approver in Chain Order 2 will be the next approver, and so on. To re-order the chain, click and hold on the line of the approver you need to move and drag the line to its new place in the order.
To remove an approver from a chain, click the bin icon () in the Actions column.
Once all configuration has been completed, click "Submit". The chain will now be active and available to use when delivering a user's experience.
Important Note 1: It will be mandatory to select an Approval Chain for each experience that is delivered if at least one chain has been configured and is in an Active status.
Important Note 2: If an administrator is included in any Approval Chain, they will automatically be granted access to the Review Experiences menu regardless of their User Permissions. For more information about User Permissions, please refer to the Introduction and Permissions guide.
Important Note 3: Approval Chain membership overrides branch access during the approval process. For example - Administrator A has access to the Brisbane branch only and is a member of an approval chain. An experience for a user in the Adelaide branch is being delivered for approval using this Approval Chain. Administrator A will be able to view the user's experience during the approval process despite not having access to the Adelaide branch. Administrator A will only be able to view the experience when it is their turn to review it. For more information about Branches, please refer to the Introduction and Permissions guide.
Editing an Approval Chain
To edit an Approval Chain, navigate to Global Site Configuration > Approval Chains > All Approval Chains. You will then be presented with a list of all configured Approval Chains.
All Approval Chains field definitions
Field Name |
Description |
Tips and information |
| ID | The system generated identification number given to the Approval Chain. |
This ID number is a system generated field only. |
| Approval Chain Name | The name that has been configured for the Approval Chain. |
This is the name the administrator delivering the experience will see when selecting the Approval Chain. For more information about delivering an experience, please refer to the Deliver An Experience guide. |
| Status | Shows whether the Approval Chain is Active (can be selected) or Inactive (cannot be selected). |
To change an Approval Chain to Active or Inactive, click the Status button. It will be mandatory to select an Approval Chain for each experience that is delivered if at least one chain has been configured and is in an Active status. |
| Last Updated/Last Updated By | The Last Updated and Last Updated By columns show the date and time the Approval Chain was last edited and which administrator made the edit. |
The time displayed will be in your organisation's configured timezone. |
| Actions | Options to Edit or Delete. |
We recommend making an Approval Chain inactive rather than deleting. If an Approval Chain is deleted, it cannot be retrieved. For information about editing an Approval Chain, please continue reading below. |
To edit an Approval Chain, select the Edit option from the Actions menu next to the relevant request. You will then be presented with a screen identical to the Add New Approval Chain screen. For more information about the fields on this screen, please refer to the Creating a New Approval Chain section above.
Important: Any changes that are made to an existing Approval Chain will take immediate effect for all new experiences that are delivered with the chain selected. The changes will not take effect for any experiences that are already mid-chain except if an administrator's Simon access is removed. For more information about this, please continue to the Broken Chains section below.
Sending an experience for approval
Please refer to the Deliver An Experience guide for instructions on how to deliver an experience for approval.
If the first approver in the Chain Order approves the experience, the approval moves on to the second approver in the Chain Order and so on until the experience has been approved by the final approver in the Chain Order. Once the final approver has approved the experience, and e-mail will be sent to the requestor confirming the experience has been approved and the experience will be automatically delivered to the user.
If an approver in a chain declines an experience, the chain will stop and the experience will not be sent to the user or the next approver in the Chain Order. An e-mail will be sent to the requestor confirming the experience has been declined and any corresponding feedback as entered by the approver. The requestor will then need to either edit the experience via the My Experiences screen or re-send a new experience via the Deliver An Experience screen, making any required changes, for the approvers to review again.
Once the amended experience has been re-sent, the approval chain will start at the beginning again at the first approver in the Chain Order.
For more information about Approval history, and tips to help your organisation decide whether to edit an existing Declined experience or whether to create a new one, please refer to the My Experiences guide.
Approving or Declining an experience
An approval chain must be selected by the administrator creating the experience for the user. Each approver in the chain is sent an e-mail advising they have been nominated as an approver when it is their turn in the Chain Order to review the experience.
To review the experience, click the “View Experience” link in the e-mail and login to the Control Panel. Alternatively, login to the Control Panel and navigate to Employee Administration > Review Requests.
Click the “In Review” button next to the relevant user to view the experience. The popup window will allow you to review all elements selected for the user and their respective configurations, as well as allow you to view the attached Documents to be accepted in the Document Acceptance element.
To approve the experience, click “Approve”. The approval request will then be sent to the next approver in the Chain Order (unless you are the last person in the chain, in which case the experience will be delivered to the user and the requestor will be notified of the approval via e-mail).
To decline the experience, click “Decline”. Feedback should be entered advising the requestor why the experience has been declined. The chain will stop, and the requestor will receive an e-mail advising of the decline and the feedback that has been entered. The declined experience will then need to be edited, or a new experience generated, and the approval chain will start again. The user will not receive any notifications until the experience has been approved by all members of the chain.
To view your own history of approvals and declines, you can toggle between the “Approved” and “Declined” tabs in the In Review table.
Broken Chains
A broken chain occurs when an administrator who was a member of an Approval Chain has been made Inactive (i.e. their access to Simon has been removed). To avoid a broken chain, an administrator should be removed from an Approval Chain before their Simon access is removed.
If an administrator who is part of a chain is made Inactive while an approval process that uses the chain is in motion, the chain will break as soon as the process reaches the inactive administrator in the Chain Order. The approval process will stop here and will not continue until the chain has been repaired and the experience has been redelivered to start the approval process again.
If an administrator who is part of a chain is made inactive and the chain is used when delivering an experience, the chain will break as soon as it reaches the position of the inactive administrator in the chain order.
Fixing a Broken Chain
When a chain has been broken and an experience using the chain has been delivered (or is already in the approval process), a red dot will appear next to the relevant experience in the My Experiences table. This red dot denotes that the approval process has been stopped due to the chain being broken:
Click on the Experience ID to check which chain is experiencing a problem. The selected chain will appear under the Experience heading. Next, navigate back to Global Site Configuration > Approval Chains > All Approval Chains and edit the relevant chain. The administrator(s) causing the chain to break will be highlighted in red. Remove the administrator from the chain using the Action column and submit the change.
Check to make sure that all issues have been resolved by navigating back to Experience Dashboard > My Experiences. The dot on the experience line should now be orange. An orange dot denotes that a chain has been fixed, and that the experience needs to be redelivered to the user:
Finally, go to Actions > Edit on the experience’s line and re-send the experience. The dot should now be removed, and the experience will now be starting its approval process again from the first approver in the Chain Order.